Nature's Evil [calibre 5.27.0]

Emissions reliably track economic growth. Between 2014 and 2020, worldwide gross product – the total of all goods and bads produced, bought and sold in the world – was growing annually by 3 to 4 per cent, and global emissions of carbon were growing by 2 to 3 per cent. Discussed by economists and promised by bureaucrats, the decoupling of these two processes has not happened. In the series of international conferences, culminating in the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 and the Paris Agreement in 2015, governments signed up to good intentions. However, not a single developed country has met the obligations it undertook as part of the Paris Agreement. The agreed goal was to limit the increase in average global temperature to 1.5 degrees above the temperature of the planet in 1880. In fact, a rise of 2, or even 3, degrees is predicted by 2050.

Oil remains the engine of the world economy. The mining and burning of coal, the most polluting fuel, continues. Economic growth continues to be the desired goal of all the governments on earth. The use of renewable energy is growing more quickly than expected, but this trickle of good news does not make up for the torrent of bad news. The Trump administration abolished even those tentative measures to limit emissions which the Obama administration introduced. In 2018, at the summit in Katowice – the traditional centre of the Polish coal industry – United Nations experts agreed there were only ten years left for humanity to take the necessary measures to lower emissions by a factor of two – only by doing this can we reach the old goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees by 2050. But these were not the official conclusions. The four oil superpowers – the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait – vetoed their adoption.

The climate has already become as warm as it was before the Ice Age, but the sea level was 30 metres higher then. Further warming will lead to the destruction of coral reefs, the flooding of island states and sea ports, a worldwide crisis in production, and the migration of populations on a massive scale. Dozens of countries – small, medium and large – will declare a state of emergency. The future fall in global output as a result of climate change is estimated at 10 to 25 per cent. Some of these predictions have already materialised. Since 1950, the number of floods has increased fifteenfold, the number of wildfires sevenfold. The first victims are those who share the earth with us but, unlike us, have no clothes, houses or air conditioners to protect them. During the last fifty years, the population of vertebrates has fallen by 60 per cent. Scientists are concerned at the disappearance of insects. Their collective biomass is diminishing at a rate of 2.5 per cent per year, and, unless something is done, by the end of the century there simply won’t be any more insects. More than half of the bee population in the USA has already died out. Pollinating countless plants, insects are a source of food for fish and birds. Thousands of their species will disappear too.

Predictions of catastrophe exert their own fascination. But the greatest disasters will be unexpected. For example, myriads of towns, railways and gas pipelines are constructed on the permafrost. As the climate warms, the permafrost will melt everywhere, but millions of people and billions of dollars depend on the chance place where the surface caves in. Forecasts extrapolate from observations that have been made in the past, but changes in the climate create a feedback loop. Living marshlands are as good as forests at absorbing carbon dioxide, but when the temperature rises the marshes perish, giving off methane. It is a vicious circle. Gradual changes alternate with explosive bursts, and they are unpredictable. That is the nature of evil.

Governments will continue to battle with the same problems with which they have always battled, such as migration. They don’t know how to cope with floods, sink holes, and the destruction of cities. Like everything to do with geography, events will occur unevenly. The coastal states of South-East Asia will come off worst. But the port cities of the Atlantic which developed for global trade will also experience their share of suffering: from Venice to Amsterdam, and from New Orleans to St Petersburg, these classical megapolises will be submerged. And, unlike the Lisbon earthquake, which could not be blamed on the sins of human beings who were simply punished for nothing, the climate catastrophe will be our fault.

Jevons’s predictions have only partly come true – coal has not even begun to run out, and oil isn’t running out either. But Jevons’s paradox is being proved with a vengeance: the more efficient the use of any sort of raw material, the more of it is consumed. So far, the only raw material of which mankind is using less, thanks to technological progress, is paper. Forests are no longer felled for the sake of bureaucratic correspondence; now they are cut down for other purposes. Even if the dreams of the Internet of Things come to pass and every home is furnished with a 3D printer which can manufacture things on the spot, this will cut out the need for transportation but will not save as much raw material and energy as was the case with paper. At the Katowice summit of 2018, experts called for a 20 per cent reduction of oil and gas production by 2030 and a 55 per cent reduction by 2050. Their plea did not fall entirely on deaf ears. The powerful American investor Warren Buffet has invested $30 billion in ‘green’ electricity generation. Another billionaire-activist, Elon Musk, plans to fill the roads with electric vehicles. Some global funds, controlling trillions of dollars, have divested from oil investments. In the face of the pandemic, the European Union has accepted an ambitious plan for a ‘green recovery’.